I Was a Doctor. Then I Walked Away.

Imagine this: a doctor walking out of the hospital, not knowing what comes next.

Halfway through my fellowship in pediatric palliative care, I had a patient encounter that left me shaken to my core.

My patient was dying from a bowel disorder. Like me, he depended on IV nutrition to stay alive. It was keeping him alive, but it wasn’t considered a long-term solution.

That day, the attending told his family he had “a few years at best.”

I still remember those words more than five years later.

Because I was dependent on IV nutrition, too.

And I was already a year into “a few years at best.”

Not long after, I put in my notice.

Leaving medicine was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I had spent years becoming a doctor. Medicine wasn’t just what I did—it had become part of who I was.

I didn’t know it then, but walking away would become the beginning of a much bigger journey—one that would completely change what I believed about illness, identity, hope, and what it means to heal.

This is the story I want to tell here.

Some of it is about being sick. Some of it is about being a doctor. And a lot of it is about everything that happens when the life you planned disappears—and you have to figure out what comes next.

I’m glad you’re here.

Until next time,

XO,

Dr. Danielle